Paidousis take reins for school security

J. MILES CARY/NEWS SENTINEL
Knox County Schools security chief Gus Paidousis, center, talks with officers Andy Lewis, left, and Shellye Morgan before the school day at Bearden High School on Dec. 13.

Knox County Schools security chief Gus Paidousis has a goal he wants to accomplish before the end of the school year.

"My big goal — and it sounds pretty simple — is to get to every single school," he said.

"I've probably hit two-thirds of them, and I think by the end of the school year I will have been to every one of them. I was born and raised here ... there are some that I'm not sure I'd ever laid eyes on until I found them in the last few months. I was a policeman here forever. But ... some of these far out in the county, I'd never even see them, let alone been inside of them."

Paidousis was hired by Knox County Schools in May after a 30-year career with the Knoxville Police Department. He joined the police department in 1981, moving up the ranks in the department.

When he accepted the top security job with the school system for an annual salary of $90,454, he was deputy chief over KPD's criminal division.

In addition to deputy chief, he also served as deputy chief of the patrol division and deputy chief of the support services division for KPD.

Paidousis said he always wanted to go into law enforcement.

"I didn't have family nor was I around police officers at all. I'm not even sure as a young man that I knew any police officers," he said. "But I was just raised in such a way that it was always impressed upon me the view to try and help other people. I saw it then, much as I see it today; it really was a great way to help people."

Paidousis says he just squeaked into his academy class — he graduated from East Tennessee State University in August 1981. Knoxville Police Department hired a police class in November 1981, but didn't hire again for another five years.

"Had I missed that class in '81, my guess is we wouldn't be sitting here visiting," he said with a chuckle.

While his first priority with Knox County Schools was to nearly triple his department, Paidousis said there are other goals he'd like to accomplish as chief. Among them is addressing the individual needs of each school when it comes to security.

Each school has done its own assessment that focuses on existing issues, he said.

"They are school based and they are done by school," he said. "The school officer, in conjunction with the school staff, that includes the principal, they review their school and determine what those priorities are. Nobody knows those priorities better than the people who are there every day."

Paidousis said his department takes the school's recommendations and priorities one by one and addresses them. Trimming the list down is another goal, he said.

"Some of them are straightforward and simple and easily understandable; some are real unique to one particular school and some of them are ... are pretty easy, inexpensive things that can help," he said.

"And then some are much more elaborate and time-consuming. We could do them this week, but no sooner that we said we were done on Friday, there will be a whole other set of issues we'd start working on."